Matt Painter’s Playbook: Integrity and Culture in College Basketball

The one things that we can all fix, and unfortunately we don't want to fix or we try to fix last is ourselves. Being transparent with the people on your team and the people you're trying to recruit to join your team is so significant. I expect you, as our best player to be two things. A, our hardest worker every single day of practice and B, our best leader. You need to make sure that this is what you want and come back to me and tell me which one. Recently we had Matt Painter, head men's basketball coach at Purdue University, on the Athletics of Business podcast. And I've got to tell you, hands down, obviously one of the highest performing podcast episodes, but one of my most rewarding, fulfilling and enjoyable podcast episodes I've ever done. Incredible conversation.

When you listen to Matt talk, you get a sense of how genuine he is, how humble he is. He and every single thing about him oozes authenticity. Matt said something early on in the conversation and I invite you to listen. Actually watch the episode on our YouTube channel, the Athletics of Business. One of the things Matt said early on in the conversation is this. He said the one things that we can all fix and unfortunately we don't want to fix or we try to fix last is ourselves. Okay? And inside of the conversation he talked a lot about honesty and being fully transparent with not, obviously not just the people inside of his program, his staff, his players, but also with the recruits which we're living in. Kind of a really odd time in college athletics.

Obviously you have the nil, you have the transfer portal. It's a bit of a mess and there's no one, and I'm not going to get off on a tangent or a soapbox here or standing on a soapbox, but there's no one to blame other than the ncaa. Okay, that's neither here nor there. But our mission here at the Molotor Group is eradicate this shortage of high impact coaching leaders in the biopharma, bio tech, life science space. And if you think about it, inside of those industries, that industry, there's a transfer portal going on every single day. And that struggle to be honest with your people and to be honest with the people that you're recruiting to join your organization is very, it's very real and it's very alive.

This is above and beyond just the inability or lack of willingness or lack of desire to possibly have a difficult conversation. This is telling them like it is and how it's going to be and what the standards and expect A great example of this is when Matt talks about, like, he'll tell a recruit, like, no, you're not. You're not going to play as a freshman. You're not going to play this. Like, here's what this means. Like, we want you to come to Purdue for four years. And in order to come to Purdue, you have to produce in practice and you have to earn your playing time. And if you want to play right away, then go kick the guy's ass in front of you.

Go out, work them, go out, perform them, have a higher level of basketball iq, have a bigger impact on the team and the program. And Matt tells them that right up front. It's not easy to do in today's society, I guess it is to say just the way things are. Like, we live in this world where it's really messed up. A, people are afraid to talk about winning, but they all want to win. B, people are afraid to talk about winning and doing things the right way for the right reasons, because for some reason we have this misnomer that those are mutually exclusive when they actually go hand in hand. And being transparent with the people on your team and the people you're trying to recruit to join your team and is so significant. So, A, they know what to expect.

B, they can come in right away and contribute to the culture that you have built and that you continue to strengthen day in and day out. If there are surprises, they're outside of anybody else's control. You know, years ago, we talked a lot about my dad on the Athletics Business podcast as well as had him on a guest, as a guest three or four times and always incredible feedback. But my dad told me a story, and he tells a story one of the episodes where he left the south side of Chicago where he was coaching at a Catholic League school. Incredible amount of success, I believe his last year there, they were 26 and 2. And he went to Palatine, which in Chicago is in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

And back in the 70s, late 70s, a bit of a reputation for being soft, the way they played basketball. And my dad went up there and took his. His values, his Catholic League demeanor, work ethic, thought process, and implemented it immediately. One of the first things he did was call his best player into his. Into a meeting. Kevin McKenna. And Kevin is now has been for quite a while the associate men's basketball coach at Oregon. Kevin's had a tremendous amount of success inside of the game of basketball, both as a player and as a coach. And he sat coming down, I think, the year before And I'm going to get these numbers wrong, but you'll get the idea.

I think the year before, Kevin average something like 25, 26 points a game on a team, I believe, that won one or two or maybe three games. And my dad immediately said, hey Kevin, sit down. And Kevin was a basketball junkie. Like he knew about my dad, he knew about Marist. He had watched him on TV the year before when they played on NBC on a Sunday morning against St. Lawrence. So Kevin kind of expected what was coming in this meeting. My dad said, Kevin, here's what I hear about you. And some of the things he mentioned were his indifference to playing defense, his ability to shoot the ball, but not necessarily the best teammate, not a bad teammate, but not a great teammate in terms of getting everybody involved and on and on, right? And it wasn't all negative.

I mean, there were some major positives there. And he had heard that Kevin was just a great kid. And he said, Kevin, here's how we're going to do things. All right? This is the way we're going to do things here. You're going to play defense, you're going to play extremely hard on the defense and we're going to play man to man. We're not playing any of that zone. We're going to play man to man. So he wants him to be their hardest worker every single day of practice and he wants them to be the best leader and he set the expectations. And one of the things I want to add that's really a cool part of the story. After he told Kevin the things that he had heard about him from others, he asked Kevin if those things were true.

And to Kevin's credit as a 17 or 18 year old young man, he said, yeah coach, those are true. So then he asked Kevin, go home and think about if you want to be a part of this program, you're not going to score 20 something points a game. Your average is going to go down. There's be more asked of you on the defensive end. There's be more demanded of you physically, mentally and emotionally. You need to make sure that this is what you want and come back to me and tell me what you want. If you come back and say, yeah coach, I want, and you self select into the way we're going to do things here at the Palatine program from now on moving forward, then that's great. Then, then let's go.

And Kevin came back and sure as heck, he said, coach, I'm In. Okay, I'm in. Whatever you asked me to do, I will do. They turned it around. I'm not sure specifically how many games in one. It wasn't in time. It was like 12 or 13. But they won a regional championship and I believe that was their first ever regional championship. Okay, Kevin had something like 42. That game against a crosstime rival. Had a dunk, the punk, a dunk at the buzzer to punctuate the game. It was an amazing story. Kevin went on to have a great career at Creighton University. And that young man whose coach came in his senior year, and the one line my dad used, I love, he said, kevin, you need to understand something like, I just got this job.

I plan on being here a lot longer than just your senior year. So we're going to do things our way, a certain way. So anyways, Kevin went on to have a great career as rookie year in the NBA, won an NBA championship with the Lakers. Back then they had magic, they had Kareem, that whole crew. He played for the Bullets, he played for the Nets. He was a player coach in the cba. He was a coach in the cba. He was a headman's basketball coach at uno and on to be an assistant at Crate with Dana Altman. Then when he went to Indiana State as a head coach and from there, very successful two year or three year run there. There he went to the Pac 12, joined Coach Altman at Oregon, and the rest is history.

What a great run they've had there over the course of the last 12, 13 or 14 years. Had my dad not been honest enough, front with Kevin about the way things are going to be, there's no telling how that senior year was, you know, would have went. Now, I'm not giving anybody credit for what happened to Kevin's career. What I'm trying to speak into here is what Matt talked about in the podcast episode. Be very clear and very honest, very transparent about what the expectations are and what the standards are. And you think about it in your world, in the business world, how many people are we telling things, you know, kind of what they want to hear so they don't leave, right? They don't go and kind of explore the job market and go look for the next shiny object.

We say the things that will keep them around until we think we'll get over the hump and all of a sudden we'll start hitting all the numbers that we need to hit. We also sometimes by not telling them everything, it's not that we're not being honest. We're just kind of holding back some things because those things that we tell them might scare them. And if you think about where you've been and what you've done in your journey and what leaders of yours have had the greatest impact and which ones that you trusted the most and that you would give the most discretionary effort to, and those are the ones that are what, that they're honest, Right. Like they're honest with themselves and they're honest with you.

And you know what to expect for them because they do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it. Okay. And they do it the way they say they're going to do it to the best of their ability. And they ask questions and they're vulnerable and they include you in the decision making. They ask you how things are impacting you. They hatch you for your. Ask you for your insight. Those are the ones that people trust the most. And what's funny about all of this, circling back to Matt, if you look at the four recruiting classes that were part of his 20, 24 final four, okay, national championship runner up, there wasn't a top five class in there and the numbers are something like 24, 42, 32nd in the country. And I forget what the fourth one is.

Might have been as high as 17th or 18th. It wasn't anything that you're going to read about in ESPN.com that people are going to talk about. Look at all the blue chips that Matt's going to get. No, he's getting people that understand what's coming and they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves because they know that the difference that's going to make not only in their lives, their family's lives.

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